The Simple Truth

Christmas Eve Service

Join us tomorrow night (12/24) at 7pm for our annual Christmas Eve Service. Service will be in the beautiful Bristol Chapel - love that place at the holidays.  We'll be singing your favorite carols, and talking about the purpose of Christmas. At the conclusion of service we'll help put together plates of Christmas cookies for the always fun Christmas Cookie give away.  After service I encourage each of you to take a plate (or two) of homemade Christmas cookies to a local service provider working on Christmas Eve. All those who receive these cookies are so appreciative and you get blessed in the process. 

Thankful For...

As followers of Jesus we are to live in a continually state of thankfulness.  First Thessalonians 5:18 tells us that it is the will of God for us to give thanks in all things.  Notice it says to give thanks "in" all things, not "for" all things.  There may be things that occur in your life for which you are not thankful but we can still maintain an attitude of gratitude while we are endure difficult circumstances.  That said, as we set aside today to focus our attention on being thankful, here are a few things for which I am extremely thankful...

• My Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ
• My beautiful wife
• My two children
• The word of God
• The opportunity to be involved in the work of the ministry
• The faithful people of PBC
• Good health
• Good friends
• Circumstances of life that drive us closer to our Lord.
• God's unfailing provision

I encourage you to spend some time today expressing your thanks to God for His numerous blessings.  Then turn that day into a lifestyle of thankfulness.

Happy Thanksgiving!

You Are What You Worship

Every person who has ever walked the earth is a worshipper. God built us to worship. The problem is that often times our worship becomes horizontal rather than vertical. We begin to worship things/people rather than worshipping the one and only God.  Even the most sophisticated of society engage in idol worship. We may not bow before a golden image of our own creation but we have idols nonetheless.  Here are a few of the more common idols in western culture...

• Almighty $$$$. We bow before the god of Benjamin (as in Franklin).
• Automobiles.  Our god is sometimes parked in our driveway or garage.
• god of the Flat screen. We spend hours each day staring blankly into our god.
• Our job - we sacrific so much on the altar of our career.
• Good time - we pursue happiness and a good time and eliminate anything that hampers our ability to have fun.
• Food - we love to eat our god in huge portions.
• Children - our life revolves around our kids and their schedules.
• Sports teams - every Sunday afternoon in the Fall hundreds of thousands of people meet for church in their local stadium.
• Self - this is our A #1 god. 

The above things are not necessarily evil things but none of them deserve the #1 place in our life. None of them are worthy of worship.

What's the big deal with misguided worship? The answer is found in Psalm 115:8.  This verse tells us that we become like the gods we worship. If we worship $ we become greedy. If we worship material things we become materialistic.  If we worship self we become ego-centric, and selfish. As followers of Jesus our priority is to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.  This transformation takes place over time as we continually give ourselves to worshipping Him. If we desire to be like Him then we have to make him the center of our worship and guard our heart against other things that would steal our worship.  

He alone is worthy of our worship.

Things I Learned on the Men's Camping Retreat

This past weekend me and a few of the fellas went on an overnight camping retreat with the intention of getting alone with God and working on our walk with Him.  It was a productive time with some good devotional time in God's word. I really enjoyed spending some time with the fellas and getting to know them better. I also enjoyed listening to the devotions given by a couple of the guys - I always love hearing what God is doing in people's hearts.  In addition to all I learned from God's word last weekend, He taught me a few other life lessons through this experience.  Here are a few...

• You can never be too prepared.  Thankfully there we certain members of our group that planned for every possible contingency - and saved us. There were others in the group that were wishing they had a time machine so they could go back and pack the things they had forgotten.
• The fellowship of suffering draws us closer to one another.  Hiking with a group of guys in the driving rain, setting up camp soaked to the bone, trying to starting a fire with damp wood, and sleeping in a tent with wet sleeping bag, built a camaraderie among the group. Sure we could have stayed in a five star hotel and been a lot more comfortable but we would not have come out the other side as close as we are now. Although I must admit I was voting for the five star hotel at 2am on Saturday morning.
• I can endure almost anything if I know the end is near. Despite being wet, cold, tired, with no legitimate sleep I knew I could make it thru because we were only going to be there for one night. When the end is in sight we can endure. How do we get through the trials of life? We know that one day all the pain will be over and we will be with Jesus forever. That's why Paul was able to call all trials "light afflictions".
• You can start a fire with damp/wet wood. Elijah did and so did we. I've never seen a group of people work so hard to keep a fire going.  It looked hopeless but they persevered and as a result the tone of the whole evening was changed. Before they got the fire started the majority of the group was ready to call it a night. Even when things look hopeless - persevere.
• Freeze Dried Food does not agree with my digestive system - sorry if that's too much information. Some of these lessons are more spiritual than others.
• Vince Lombardi was right when he said, "Fatigue makes cowards of us all." There were times on the hike out of the camp site that I was really tired. I'm in decent shape but walking 3 miles with a 50 pound pack, up and down steep grades, in the heat, on no sleep was tough. There were genuinely times on some of the steep uphill grades that I was praying to God for strength to make it through. We need to draw our strength from a greater power source. Don't ask for a lighter burden, or easier path; ask for strength to walk the course He's given you.
• When you don't think you can take one more step, you can! This goes with the previous item. When you feel like you can't go on just keep putting on foot in front of the other.  I love what Winston Churchill once said, "when you find yourself passing thru the valley of the shadow of death, keep walking."
• Encouragement is crucial. During tough times we need others to come along side us and encourage us.  Knowing you are not alone and that someone is there to help you gives you a tremendous boost. 
• Finally, Whenever I say that I am going camping it is guaranteed to rain.  If you are experiencing a drought, pitch me a tent, and within hours the heavens will open up and you'll be singing in the rain.

Maintaining My Temple

Are you the type of person who moves from one fad diet to another? Do you have expensive exercise equipment acting as a coat rack in your house? Do you find yourself continually fatigued? Don't miss service at PBC this Sunday.

This Sunday we wrap up our four week series, "Living It Up"!  This week - "Maintaining My Temple". The Bible has much to offer us about how to live a more healthy physical life.  On Sunday we'll talk about the three big areas of our physical life - exercise, eating, and ease.  Most importantly we'll examine the mindset behind these areas that will make us successful in the management of our temple.   

The Spirit of Christmas Present

We are entering the Christmas rush...

• Gifts to purchase / wrap
• Goodies to bake (or in my case buy)
• Travel plans to finalize
• Decorations to put up
• Packages to ship
• Christmas cards to send out
• Parties to attend

I can feel my blood pressure rising as I type this list.  So much to do and so little time to get it done. The Christmas season can be a busy and even frantic time of year - that's the understatement of the year.  For many, the harried and frantic pace of life isn't restricted to the holidays.  In fact, in the modern age the word most used by people to describe their life is, "busy".  

Is that just the way it is?  Is there anything we can do about our busy lifestyle? I think so. Join us this Sunday as we are visited by the Spirit of Christmas Present and learn how we can battle hurry and busyness in our life. 

Thanks!

Time for the annual Thanksgiving day blog post about being thankful.  It's great that each year we set aside a day to focus on being thankful, but as a follower of Jesus we should make thankfulness a part of our everyday life.  It is God's will for us to be thankful - I Thessalonians 5:18.  Here are a few things I'm thankful for this year...

• My wonderful wife.
• My beautiful children.
• Good friends.
• A home - what a blessing.
• Running water and food on the table.
• Good health.
• The chance to serve with the people of PBC.
• The blessing of music.
• Books.
• Most of all - my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

What about you? What are you thankful for this Thanksgiving Day?

Rescue Workers BBQ

We had another great Rescue Workers BBQ this past weekend.  The weather was great!  The food was delicious!  The games were a lot of fun! The blowup slide was enormous! (although I must admit, I was not happy with the height restrictions - you couldn't be over 6'4". That's height discrimination!)  Most of all it was just a blessing to be able to minister to the emergency responders and their families.  Thank you for all you do!  Also, let me say a special thank you to all the people at PBC who help make this event a huge success. 

Here is a Facebook thank you from the Monmouth Junction Firehouse...

http://www.facebook.com/mjvfd?v=wall

Rescue Workers BBQ

 I am fired up (pun intended) about our 3rd annual Fire and Rescue Workers BBQ this Saturday (9/25).  The BBQ will be from 1-4pm at Reichler Park in Monmouth Junction.  This year our church is saying thank you to the volunteer firefighters and EMTs in Kingston, Kendall Park, Monmouth Junction, and Plainsboro.  We've got a ton of cool things planned for both the kids and adults.  The food is going to be out of this world!  The door prize is amazing. This is definitely a don't miss event.  I hope you'll come out and join us in saying "thank you" to the men and women who continually put their lives on the line to insure our safety.  

For more information check out this link to the PBC website.

Spiritual Apathy

 What do you have to do to become spiritually apathetic in life?  Absolutely nothing!  We naturally move toward apathy (lukewarm) as a result of being idle in our walk with God.  If you take a hot cup of coffee or an iced coffee and leave at room temperature it immediately starts moving toward lukewarm.  Without some outside energy being exerted on the drink, within an hour it will be lukewarm.  The same is true of our walk with God.  If we are not intentionally infusing our walk with more of Him we will quickly find our spiritual life in a lukewarm state.  What can we do in order to prevent our spiritual life from becoming lukewarm/stale/apathetic?  Let me give you three things to consider...

• Get to know the true character of God.  We sometimes become apathetic because we don't know the true character of God.  If we really understood who He is and what He's like we would find it difficult to become apathetic about our walk with Him.  The prophet Isaiah discovered this in Isaiah 6:1-8.
• Get rid of your divided heart.  When I get distracted by the temporal things of this world, I become apathetic toward the eternal things of God.  It's not possible to serve two masters.  He must be my focus and my one desire.
• Get in touch with God's purpose for your life.  Purpose produces passion.  If you know why God created you and has you here on this planet you will not struggle with apathy.  What is your purpose?  Ultimately, our purpose is to bring God glory.  Achieving that goal will be expressed in a multitude of ways.  Your specific purpose is as unique as you are.